Lonely Together

They're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinking alone

— Billy Joel, "Piano Man"

Misery loves company.

Characters with nothing in common except their loneliness band together — as many or as few as are lonely. Anything from brief moments of A Friend in Need as they offer moral support to the formation of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits from the Power of Friendship can ensue. Couples may get all the way to the Power of Love starting from here.

May justify Pairing the Spares. Contrast Alone Among the Couples. Compare with its cousin Breakfast Club, for a gang of lonely and miserable people that are together because of it, and Commonality Connection. See also Twice Shy.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Bleach:
  • Despite their contrasting personalities, Starrk and Lilynette — two Arrancars that had been split from the same Hollow — have stayed with each other ever since out of their loneliness and desire for friendship. They even (possibly) died together while a flashback of when they met for the first time is shown
  • Turns out this is how Gin and Rangiku met and became friends, too. Both of them were orphans from the Rukongai parts of Soul Society, Gin saved Rangiku from starving to death, Rangiku was the first person who treated him as a friend...
• In the manga version of Chrono Crusade, Viede guesses that Fiore and Joshua might care for each other so much because they're both "missing something" — that is, they've both been separated from a beloved sibling ( Satella for the former, Rosette for the latter).
• Cowboy Bebop: None of them will ever admit it, but this is one of the biggest reasons the crew of the Bebop stays together.
• In Gourmet Girl Graffiti, Ryou and Shiina started their lunch sharing through this trope; they are the only people that are Eating Lunch Alone in the Cram School they attend.
• England and Japan form an alliance at one point in Hetalia: Axis Powers because of this. The strip featuring this event is even titled "The Anglo-Japanese Alliance Between Two Lonely People".
  • Due to their histories of being isolationist, some fans have started to group America, England, and Japan together as the "Lonely Trio".
  • In fandom, the Russia/China pairing gets this, as the two are, in canon, the more outcast of the Allied Forces. It also helps that they were about the only major Communist forces during the Cold War and pretty much banded together against the rest of the world (for some time, at least).
  • Prussia/Canada also gets this, as many fans like the idea of the lonely ex-nation finding a sympathetic ear in the forgotten nation and vice versa.
• In Inuyasha, this is how Kikyou and Inuyasha got together in the past. Kikyou was a very respected Teen Genius Miko but people tended to not see beyond this facade and thus, save for her little sister Kaede, she was very lonely. On the other hand, Inuyasha was a half-Youkai and thus was ostracized ever since childhood by both humans and youkais. Kikyou treated Inuyasha with kindness, Inuyasha treated Kikyou without making distinctions... therefore, they started to fall in love and decided to wish on the Shikon no Tama so he would become a human, which would allow them to stay together. Then Naraku happened...
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • Maki preemptively offers to do this with Ishigami during the Culture Festival arc, promising to hang out with him if Tsubame turns down his love confession so they could both wallow in misery over their failed love lives together.
  • Deconstructed with Iino and Osaragi, whose entire friendship is based on the fact that they were both outcasts in elementary school. This eventually causes their entire relationship to fall apart at the seams in Chapter 231 because the former now has a wider social circle and the latter has been a horrible friend for the past several months (if not since the beginning).
  Osaragi: Miko-chan and I are friends in name only.
• Mars (1996): When Rei freaks out after Kira accepts living with her mother and abusive step-father, Tatsuya tries to get Rei to sympathize with Kira's plight by telling him that Kira's mom is all she has left (considering Kira is an only child and her father died when she was in grade school) and turning her back on her would leave Kira all alone. Rei shouts back "I'm alone, too!" (his twin brother having committed suicide years ago, his mom dying when he was a kid, and Rei being estranged from his father, his only living relative left), all but saying that he expected their relationship to be this trope.
• This is how Kira and Lacus bond in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED when they first meet on the Archangel. They are both isolated - Lacus being associated with the enemy ZAFT and Kira by his responsibilities in protecting Archangel, as well as both being the only Coordinators on the ship.
• In Naruto, the title character and Sasuke's bond is this, both knowing how painful it is to have no one else waiting for you at home and no friends to share your burdens with.
• In A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow, this is the basis of the friendship between the two leads. Konatsu Amano is a transfer student from Tokyo who feels out of place in the small town, while Koyuki Honami is a model student whose perfect reputation makes her seem unapproachable.
• A rather popular "interpretation" for Doumeki and Kohane in ×××HOLiC. It does make sense: they got along decently, they both loved Watanuki in their own ways, and it's likely that they chose to marry because he wanted to leave behind descendants to watch over Watanuki as he waits, unaging, for an untold amount of time for the chance to meet Yuuko again, and she probably agreed with his sentiments.

Comic Books

• In Power Pack, when their mother was in the hospital, Katie invited several characters they had met to have Thanksgiving with them. This infuriated her brothers and sister, and at the climax, she explained that when they met the Morlocks, her sister had told her how she had realized it was better to be alone and miserable together, and so she had invited everyone else who had no one else to celebrate Thanksgiving with. Her older brother declares that they can have a party if they're going to be miserable at it.
• The Internship: In Volume 3, during (yet another) argument with Cooper, River admits that this is part of why they want to genuinely get along with him. River, having faced isolation themselves due to identifying as a transgender individual, actually empathizes with Cooper’s feelings of being an outcast. Realizing this turns out to be a major wake-up call for Coop, as it makes him realize that he’s not alone in the world, causing him to start thinking positively for the first time.
• Ultimate Marvel: In Ultimate Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy suddenly became an orphan: her mother ran away and refuses to come back for her, and her father is killed by a criminal. So May welcomed her in the Parkers' house. She confessed during psychology that she did not do so just because of being a good person, she kept her because Peter is usually out, the quiet house reminds her of the people she lost, and having Gwen around prevents the house from being quiet.
• In an issue of Wonder Woman Vol 3, Diana and her frequent opponent, Giganta, take a brief time out in fighting to discuss their respective man troubles. As much as Giganta hates Diana, she does offer advice all the same.

Comic Strips

• Peanuts: In the very first summer camp story arc (published in June 1965), Charlie Brown was very quick to befriend Roy when he found out that the latter was lonely.

Fan Works

• Bloom Fully on the Tall Wall ends in the depressed-and-suicidal Homura kissing the also depressed-and-suicidal Togo after they agree that their crushes, Madoka and Yuna, are unobtainable pipe dreams.
• The Choices That Make Us: In the first couple years after the war, Pansy reflects that after trying to turn Harry in before the Battle of Hogwarts, her only remaining friends are Goyle and Nott, who are both pariahs themselves for aiding the Death Eaters in torturing people.
• A Crown of Stars: Asuka and Shinji are in this situation at the very beginning of the story. They have been drawn to each other since they were teens, but they had been unable to open up and reach out to each other back then. After several years of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world and being the plaything of two dictators, Asuka is so torn and soul-weary that she does not dare to love anybody (and she thinks she is not worthy of being loved by anyone). They stick together because they're kindred spirits and believe that nobody else in the world could understand their pain. However, their relationship is very fragile and they expect and fear that it will eventually collapse. From that point, the fic narrates how they and their relationship get gradually better.

Films — Animation

• This trope is ultimately what causes the two main characters of Wreck-It Ralph, Ralph and Vanellope, to come together, as the two recognize the obvious parallels between them. Both are outcasts in their respective games, treated like dirt by their fellow NPCs and forced to eke out a living in a garbage dump, who are seeking a better life for themselves.

Films — Live-Action

• From Here to Eternity has Lorene invoke this trope with Prew. She says they won't be married or have kids, but they're good for now because they both need each other. She's a Hooker with a Heart of Gold who wants to be respectable one day, and he's a soldier ostracised by the rest of his men.
• Lost in Translation. Bob, the over-the-hill movie star, and Charlotte, the tag-along wife of a busy photographer, have nothing in common except insomnia and loneliness. If they didn't happen to be staying at the same hotel, they'd never have met.
• My Summer of Love's two female protagonists, Mona (Natalie Press) and Tamsin (Emily Blunt), are neglected by their families and start a lesbian affair over it.
• The Station Agent is an essay on this trope, showing us characters who are all lonely but in completely different ways. Train enthusiast Finn has been so thoroughly mocked and belittled for his dwarfism that he's emotionally isolated himself, and jumps at the chance to physically isolate himself when he inherits an abandoned train depot in the middle of nowhere and promptly moves in. He strikes up a reluctant friendship with Olivia, who is battling depression after the death of her young son, and Joe, who was forced to leave his life in Manhattan to care for his sick father and run his food truck.
• The Yellow Handkerchief has three strangers becoming friends over the course of a road trip. They're all lonely at the start of the film, which is why they're drawn together.

Literature

• Cheburashka: Gena and Cheburashka bond over both being lonely and having no friends, and then decide there must be a lot of other lonely animals and people around and they have to make sure they get friends too.
• Initially when Semi and Miranda become close in Dr. Franklin's Island it's partly this. They were friendly before, and Semi needed Miranda, but it's when the third member of their party vanishes and they are otherwise completely alone that they really end up close, and finding that there are similarities after all.
• Haganai is a series exactly based on this trope, starring seven social losers under the banner of the Neighbor Club, whose ostensible purpose is to help them open up to society.
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has a Friendship Moment like this near the end: Harry is mourning the death of Sirius and doesn't feel like being around anyone. He runs into Luna, who is basically friendless and currently looking for items stolen by other students. They take a minute to talk about losing loved ones, marking the first time that Harry really thinks of her as someone other than "that weird girl."
• Tarma and Kethry in Heralds of Valdemar's Vows and Honor start off from this basis, teaming up to help Tarma take Revenge on the bandits who slaughtered her clan, only for Tarma to try to die when they had finished. Kethry saves her and gets her to talk about why she didn't want to live. At the end of it Tarma proposes becoming oath-sisters because neither of them has anyone else, and they wind up exceedingly close over time.
  "She suddenly felt all Tarma's loneliness and her own as well, and in the darkness of the night it is sometimes possible to say things that are too intense and too true for daylight."
• In The Hunger Games, Katniss and Madge (the mayor's daughter) are loners at school and so end up partnered together for school events and projects by default.
• In Poul Anderson's "Losers' Night", the Old Phoenix, the Inn Between the Worlds, has a night where all the guests are failures. Unusually for the inn, this night allows people to magically understand each other — so they can commiserate.
• The Malazan Book of the Fallen has the human Seerdomin and the Tiste Andii Spinnock Durav who meet every evening in Scour Tavern to play Kef Tanar, get drunk and be miserable together. When Spinnock falls in love with a human priestess Seerdomin even calls him a fool for not acting on his feelings, but it still amounts to nothing.
• In H. Rider Haggard's Moon of Israel, Prince Seti, having been disowned and denied the throne, talks about this with his Love Interest Merapi, living with him in exile from the Hebrew slaves.
• In an Outlander novel, Claire and Lord John got married and slept together because they both thought Jamie was dead.
• This is how P. G. Wodehouse's Psmith got his start as a character; he and pre-existing character Mike Jackson were pulled out of their respective schools and exiled to an obscure school called Sedleigh. Wodehouse also used this trope in his romantic fiction to set up young couples; Something Fresh is a good example.
• In Iron Shadows in the Moon, Olivia uses this on Conan the Barbarian.
  "You are a barbarian, and I am an outcast, denied by my people. We are both pariahs, wanderers of earth. Oh, take me with you!"
• Wars of the Realm: after Drew is involved in a car crash that kills Joey Houk, he finds himself spurned and maligned by the entirety of Rivercrest High...except for Ben, the school's other main loner.

Live-Action TV

• In Babylon 5, Lennier and Vir are shown sitting at a bar commiserating on a number of occasions, having similar concerns about their jobs and various ongoing situations. It is implied that this is something they actually do on a regular basis, despite their bosses spending a significant portion of the show on opposite sides of the larger conflict.
• Comes up a few times in Cheers. In particular, it's the focus of the episode "Thanksgiving Orphans", where the gang can't be with their loved ones on Thanksgiving and instead eat dinner at Carla's. In the end, they declare they're thankful for all the people they miss (Norm's wife, Cliff's mother, the recently-deceased Coach) since it does mean they have people they care about.
  Coach: Y'know, loneliness is a great thing to share.
• Doctor Who: The Doctor's relationship with his companions often starts from here; whether it be platonic or romantic, most of the people he travels with are loners, and many are explicitly depicted as lonely. As for the Doctor: there is a reason why one character refers to him as the Lonely Angel.
  • To give some context, in the classic series reference was made to Dodo's great-aunt and Jo's uncle, Victoria and Leela's fathers and Tegan's aunt were killed shortly before they started travelling with the Doctor (although a later episode saw them visit Tegan's grandfather), Nyssa's father was possessed by the Master, Turlough left the Doctor after being reunited with his brother, and we briefly meet Peri's stepfather and Ace's grandmother (albeit meeting the grandmother during World War II when Ace's future mother is only a baby herself).
    • Spin-off media set in the Classic Era also revealed that Dodo was an orphan raised by a strict great-aunt she didn't get along with, Peri's mother died during a Cyberman attack when the Doctor took her home for a visit, and Ace had a half-brother.
• Forever: Henry and Jo have both lost the love of their life and aren't yet over them. Jo took to drinking and meaningless one night stands, while Henry isolated himself from any new relationships, even casual friendship. In the first episode, Henry gives Jo company when she retreats to a bar, and after Jo asks Henry his story, he asks Jo about her late husband. In "The Art of Murder" Henry and Jo bond over how hard it is to go back to a place where they shared happy memories with their spouse.
• Friends: Chandler and Monica have a moment in Season 4. Chandler is in love with Joey's girlfriend, and Monica is boyfriendless and ill. On finding each other wearing pajamas and wrapped in blankets, they curl up miserably together.
• Game of Thrones: Arya proposes Gendry the offer of becoming his family; ironically, he responds saying that he is too lowborn for her.
  Gendry: These men [the Brotherhood] are brothers, a family; I never had a family.
  Arya: I can be your family!
  Gendry: You wouldn't be my family; you'd be my Lady.
• Heroes: Sylar and Peter as of Season 4 episode 18 (or around there), The Wall. Rather forced on them since spending five years with only each other as company would suck pretty badly, especially if it's with the guy who killed your brother. It appears that their reluctant alliance will last into the real world.
• Kevin Can F**k Himself: Allison is trapped in an financially and emotionally abusive marriage to Kevin, and has no friends of her own. Patty supposedly does have friends, but secretly loathes them all, especially Kevin, finding him to be cruel and boorish, and mostly sticks around because he's friends with her brother Neil, and she has nowhere else to go. Both women suffer from deep depression and loneliness, and each throw up a mask over their real feelings (Allison being a desperate Stepford Smiler on the brink of a full breakdown, while Patty is more a Sour Outside, Sad Inside type). Despite their differences in personality and their distant, unfriendly relationship at the start of the series, the two gradually morph into Heterosexual Life-Partners, bonding when they each realize the other is as alone and desperate for love as they are. The final lines of the series are the two women agreeing, "Let's die alone together."
• On NCIS, after a story arc where they both gain significant others, Tony and Ziva note that no matter what happens, at the end of the day, they're always the ones sharing drinks alone in a bar together.
• From Scrubs, after J.D. and his girlfriend realise their incompatibility;
  J.D.: So I guess...this is over.
  Danni: Why?
  J.D.: So, you'd rather hang out with someone you don't even like than be alone?
  Danni: Yeah, pretty much.
  J.D.: Yeah, me too. I mean, come on, how many couples out there actually have fun together?
• Happened once in That '70s Show, when Jackie was lonely, Hyde suggests that she find someone to spend time with (specifically, Donna, or someone that's not him). However, Jackie mentions that he's alone a lot too, before stating:
  Jackie: You're alone. I'm alone. We could be alone together!
• Viudas e hijos del Rock and Roll: Piojo is a complete loser, so much that he's still a virgin. Estela is another loser, who can't even get 10 people to go to her birthday, and even those leave one by one. But, as Pipo points out, she will not be left alone, he will leave her with Piojo, and, as the background music says, "hay química entre los dos"

Manhua

• The reason for Lu Xiao's desire to be with Long Wei in Infinity Game, as he's just as cripplingly lonely as she is, but she never has the courage to tell him.

Music

• Billy Joel's "Piano Man", as seen in the page quote, is about lonely people coming together in a bar to share stories about their hardships, regrets, and unfulfilled dreams.
• Owl City, "The Christmas Song"
  I don't have anyone at home to talk to
  And you don't have anything to do
  So I'll spend my Christmas with you
• The Barry Manilow song "Lonely Together" could possibly be the Trope Namer. Video here.
• Harry Chapin, "A Better Place to Be". The refrain says it all: "If you want me to come with you then that's all right with me / 'cause I know I'm going nowhere and anywhere's a better place to be."
• The main characters of Get Set Go's song "Lonely World" don't particularly care about each other, but they're lonely, and they can get together, so why not.
• Air Supply's "Even the Nights Are Better" is about two people who first got together due to loneliness and then fell in love for real.
• "Alone Together" by Justin McRoberts
• Masked Intruder's "I Don't Wanna Be Alone Tonight", predictably.
• Fall Out Boy's "Alone Together". "I don't know where you're going, but do you have room for one more troubled soul..."
• Subverted in Moby's music video of "Are You Lost in the World Like Me?," which depicts an old-timey cartoon world where modern technology addiction exists to dystopian levels. Given the title, you'd assume that the two main characters—a boy desperately trying to connect to people and a girl whose humiliating video went viral—would meet and comfort each other. Instead, they only "meet" in the sense that the boy witnesses the girl's suicide.
• The music video for Hayley Kiyoko's "One Bad Night" tells the story of a miserable valet and a woman down on her luck who meet after both are injured in a mugging. They wind up sharing a meal at a diner together and having a good time, and she even helps him flirt with a waitress he likes.
• The opening lyrics of "Sharing The Night Together" have the male singer, approaching a lonely woman in a bar and describing himself as lonely too, looking to alleviate that for even one night.
• In The Police's "Message In A Bottle", the narrator, who's trapped at a deserted island, puts out a Message in a Bottle in the hopes that somebody will find him. A year later, he's surprised to see "a hundred billion bottles washed upon the shore" with similar messages inside.
  Seems I'm not alone at being alone.
  Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home.
• Rammstein's "Armee der Tristen" (lit. "Army of the Sad") is an exploration of the darker elements of this trope, and about how those lonely and depressed can band together and turn their negative emotions into destructive tendencies. Amongst the (translated) lyrics are standouts like, "Come join us and fall in line / We want to be sad together", "Hand in hand, no looking back / come on, we are closing our ranks", and "Should we despair together / Depressed and melancholic / Pessimistic, diabolic."
• "broken" by lovelytheband puts it succinctly:
  I like that you're lonely
  Lonely like me
  I could be lonely with you

Tabletop Games

• Promethean: The Created in White Wolf's World of Darkness. It doesn't matter if you can barely stand your Throngmate... he's not trying to kill you just for existing!

Theatre

• In the musical Promises, Promises, Chuck and Marge, acquaintances from work, sing "A Fact Can Be a Beautiful Thing" while hanging out in a bar on Christmas. (I'll add more info after I get the libretto out again. It's been a while.)
• A song in Spamalot titled "I'm All Alone" starts with King Arthur singing about how alone he is, and Patsy reminding him that he's right there, while the king is singing the song. Then the chorus comes in and sings "We're all alone," leading to:
  King Arthur: We must be lonely side-by-side. It's a perfect way to hide.

Video Games

• In League of Legends, Kindred was once the singular incarnation of Death, before splitting itself into Wolf and Lamb so that it could always have a friend.
• If you choose Otacon's ending in Metal Gear Solid, it's basically this. Otacon has no friends because he's a painfully unlucky Otaku and Snake has no friends because he killed them all. In later games, they fight Metal Gear proliferation.
• A central theme of Persona 5; each member of the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that make up the main cast as well as the Confidants that make up the supporting cast has some aspect that makes them an outcast to society at large. As a result, all of them end up feeling a kinship with Joker/Ren, whose criminal record led to him being shunned by almost everyone he meets.

Visual Novels

• The whole summer school class in Double Homework, minus Johanna and Dennis, are like this, but especially Morgan and Amy. Despite having "exactly two things in common," as Morgan says, and many differences, the two of them quickly become close friends.
• The Last Birdling centers around an Interspecies Friendship between Tayo, a human child, and Bimonia, a Birdling child. Neither of them has ever had any friends their own age, Tayo due to her "unladylike" interest in archery and Bimonia due to being one of the last members of her species, and thus the two take to each other very quickly.

Web Comics

• This is what really drives the bond which forms between Lydia and Betelgeuse in Cobweb and Stripes. She comes from a Friendless Background and he's arguably the least liked person in the entire Neitherworld. Helping to ease her loneliness is forcing him to acknowledge how lonely he's been too.
• In The Greenhouse, the demon 'Red' has spent the entirety of her time on earth trapped in a mirror, able to glimpse the lives of the humans who rented her apartment but never interact with them. Mica, her host, fully expects to have to run away from everyone she knows and loves to prevent her Psycho Ex-Girlfriend from ruining their lives. In a moment of vulnerability, Red points out that she can't be hurt like that, and asks Mica to resummon her once they've been separated, so at least they can be alone together. Mica says yes.

Web Original

• In chapter 3 of Loves Lost And Found, "Aoife" and Hardestadt eventually agree that they're both miserably lonely, so they decide to spend time with each other so they'll feel slightly better about themselves.
• In Twig, Lillian befriends Mary while the latter is locked up undergoing debriefing at Radham Academy, where Lillian, a scholarship student who gets her credit hours by acting as The Medic for the Lambsbridge Gang, is isolated from both the other Lambs and her fellow students, and Mary has lost the semblance of a family created by the man who cloned her after he left her to die.

Western Animation

• Arcane: Viktor as a child plays with a mechanical boat rather than with the other kids, implied to be partly because of his disability. When he stumbles upon Mad Scientist Singed attempting to save the life of a giant salamander named Rio, Singed after noting his friendless status comments that loneliness can be a by product of genius. When Viktor offers to help save Rio, Singed says they can be loners together.
• Bojack Horseman and his agent Princess Carolyn have maintained an on-and-off personal and professional relationship for decades because it beats being alone, even though they both know it's not going anywhere. Bojack eventually fires her, so this isn't an option for either of them anymore.
• In Futurama's "Xmas Story", Fry misses his family and Leela never even had a family. Their friendship deepens as they realize they can share these feelings. Fry actually sees Leela as a potential love interest but she doesn't reciprocate.
  Leela: You didn't need to buy me a present, Fry.
  Fry: I just wanted to do something to make you happy. I mean, I miss my family but you never even had a family.
  Leela: It's OK. You're lonely and I'm lonely. But, together, we're lonely together.
  [they hold hands]
  Fry: Merry Xmas, Leela.
  Leela: Merry Xmas.
• The Thanksgiving episode of Hey Arnold! does this to Helga and Arnold. Even though they have families, they feel alone like they've never truly celebrated Thanksgiving before, so they bond with each other as they try to find the perfect Thanksgiving.
• In the Justice League episode "Hereafter", Vandal Savage and a time-displaced-and-depowered Superman are stuck on a barren future Earth devoid of all other human life. The driven-to-sanity Vandal Savage is overjoyed to meet a fellow person, even if he is an old enemy, and invites him to his house for lunch. And to show him all the self-help books he's read over the millennium to cure his megalomania.
• A group of villains in My Life as a Teenage Robot, the Lonely Hearts Club Gang, are based entirely around this. Their goal, apparently, is to make everyone in Tremorton as miserable and loveless as they are.
• Rugrats reveals that Chuckie's mother died not long ago, and Chuckie barely remembers her. Chaz is reluctant to show him her things until this exchange.
  Chaz: I'm just afraid he'll miss her.
  Didi: Then you can miss her together.
• The Simpsons: Principal Skinner and Edna Krabappel first hook up after sharing their extremely dull plans for the weekend and realising how bored and lonely they both are.
• On Total Drama Revenge of the Island—Zoey and Cameron both have Friendless Backgrounds and become close friends over the course of the season. It's only Played With, however, since they both also get other friends (and in Zoey's case, a boyfriend) over the course of the season.

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